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De1re.dt> fo$ril.d11' 30, 1909.
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October 30, ,909 .
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I ��H SOLUIS.] .=::::::::::::::::::::::::::::�::::::::::-::::::::===:::::::::::::::::::::::--------------------�f:A:N:._:C:::A DHE The patriotism they patriotism and morality. teach no longer means adhesion to the statement, 'My country, right' or wrong, My country/ but a united effort on the part of all its citizens to make the country right. This is the ideal : if it is not always realised the complex character of the race is the chief cause. In "Impressions of American Education in 1908,'' by Miss Sara A. Burstall, of Manchester High School for Girls, published in the present year, there is an excellent account of how history is taught in all classes of schools, and of its importance as a school subject in the national education of the States. One of the remarkable things about the " rise " of history in American education is that it was partly brought about through the pioneer work done in the Horace Mann Elementary School of New York, and at the Dewev Exerimental School of Chicago. These are - schools run on special lines by teachers who have a deep reverence for their calling, and who regard teaching as one of the most important instruments of nation-building. Their example in the teaching of history is now being followed widely in the public schools. Their methods are of the best, and it was through want of method and of scholarly histories the teaching of history in American schools suffered most. The unreliable and unscientific text books are being set aside, and teachers are beginning not only to teach well, but to teach only what is true. Miss Burstall had been a teacher of history for over twenty years before she went on her inquiry to the States, and while there the teaching of her favourite subject was her particular study. She found that history was taught in practically all the public schools, that it was compulsory in many, and that in the higher schools civics, including history, geography, and political economy, was a special branch of education, the purpose of which was to fit young Americans for citizenship. The teaching of civics has been going on for some years, and it will be soon fairly general in the schools of the whole Union. The result is that young Americans are being taught how to act as well as how to feel patrioticalJy. They do not talk much about "America for the Americans," but they are making sure that they will be better equipped for the life struggle than any immigrant can be. _The immigrant from Russia, Ireland or Italy is generally unskilled and ill-educated. His chances against the young Americans, who have begun to acquire more reason and guidance in their patriotism, are every day gr�wing less. S. MAC G.
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OIREACHTAS, 1910.
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DRAMA COMPETITIONS. A three act drama in Iris.i, taking about two rst prize, fro ; znd prize, hours to perform. . £5. MSS. must reach the Oireachtas Secretary by rst january, rgro. The two best plays will be selected, and, if possible, performed at the roro Oireachtas and the final adjudication then No act should contain more than one made. scene. Competitors are requested to bear in mind that the number of speaking characters should be limited, as far as is consistent with the treatment of the subject. Simplicity of scenery and dress are also recommended. Once the two best plays have been selected, they become the absolute property of the Oirecahtas Committee. Propagandist bilingual one-act play dealing witb the Gaelic movement, taking about three Ist prize, £5 ; quarte1;s of an hour to perform. znd pnze, £2 ros. MSS. must reach the Oireachtas Secretary by rst January, roro, The two best plays will be selected, and, if possible, performed at tbe rgro Oireachtas, and the final adjudication then made. No change of scene allowed, and the number of speaking characters must not exceed six. Much paraphernalia should also be avoided. The plot of this play must be laid bare in English, as the object is that it might be possible for an English speaker to follcw it and become a convert to the language movement. We �ish to draw the special attention of competitors to these competitions, as the Jast day for sending in MSS. will be the rst January Each play should be accompanied by a next. sealed envelope bearing a "nom de plume," and number of the competition, and containing within the writer's real name and address.
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75 Lr. Dorset Street, DUBLIN.
A NEW BRANCH IN NAAS. ..
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A meeting was held in Kaas on October r 5th for the purpose of establishing a Branch of the Gaelic League There were The Rev. Father Norris, P.P., presided. several speakers, amongst them being Miss Hayden and Micheal Smidic of the Coiste Gnotha, and Seam us Deacon of the Industrial Development Association. Mr. Seamus Deacon moved a resolution in support of the industrial movement. He referred to the close association of the language and the industrial moveThe same thing was occurring in Ireland men fa. at the present day-although they may be too near to it to observe the process- as that which occurred in other countries, such as Denmark, Belgium Bohemia, Hungary-namely, that the revival of the language brought about a revival of industry and commercial The language revival in Ireland had now activity. reached such a point that there was no question of its reality and no doubt of its success. It lay in the hands of the people themselves to make the industrial revival a success. These Returns showed the great trade that Ireland carried on annually-over one hundred millions of money in value-and in face of them it was absurd to think Ireland a dying nation. Ireland bought more goods from England every year than all her colonies put together, and more than was bought from her by such European countries as France, Germany, and He directed the attention of his Italy put together. audience to the millions of money which were spent annually on goods imported to the country which were made in Ireland, these millions heing lost to. Ireland because' the people will not insist on having There was, he said, one disthe Irish-made article. advantage in speaking of millions in this connection It was so hard to think in millions and at the same time make the matter personal to the individual. He would take, for instance, the case of a man who went into a shop to buy a box of matches. That man said to himself: "Well, my penny does not mean anything to the country one way or the other. It does no matter whether I buy Irish-made matches or foreign-made The result of that was that last year matches." they had imported into Ireland matches to the value The pennies of the individuals would of £84,353. have saved that- amount to the country and given employment to some hundreds of hands. He insisted that it was the want of realisation on the part of the individual of his duty to his country in purchasing the necessities of every-day life that lost to Ireland every year such an enormous amount of money. • '1 It had been the custom of Irish public bodies to give away every year among other contracts the" contracts for medicines and the supply of medical appliances. They The English public gave them to English firms. public bodies would give none of· these' contracts to From the trade thus firms other than English firms. secured the English firms were able to under-sell the Irish firms in the 'contracts for the Irish public institutions. :,. r w-n. he thought that was" not good enough, and he saw no reason why Irish public bodies should not take a leaf out of the book of the English public bodies. He spoke to Irish firms on the subject and to members of public bodies, with the result that at the present time practically every public'[ board in Ireland, with the exception of a few in the South of Ireland, have given" their contracts for medicines and medical and surgical appliances to Irish firms. Mr Harvey seconded the resolution. Miss Mary Hayden, M.A., proposed "That the Gaelic League is worthy of support, and that a Branch is hereby established in Naas." ti ''l She did not think, she said, it was necessary to say The worst feature of these Gaelic League much. that those that came to them were already was meetings converted, so that it seemed unnecessary to say much to them, and those that were not converted remained away. Therefore, it seemed something like superfluous to impress on those present the great benefit of the Gaelic League to Ireland and the duty that rested on She had rather a rude the people to support it. awakening down in the South of Ireland recently when speaking to a man about the duty that rested on the people to support the Irish language. The man became so dramatic in his conversation on the subject that she thought he was a· great exponent of the doctrine, but she made the horrible discovery that not one of his children knew a word of the language. At another time in Connemara when she questioned a woman as to whether her children were taught Irish she said, "Oh .yes, but when one of them went outside while she (Miss Hayden) was there, the mother The said, " Orra, Mary, come in out of the rain." mother, she added, said, "I have a fashion of talking Miss Hayden next related the English to them." instance of a man who professed to take a great interest in the support of Irish manufactured articles, and some mischievious person took up his hat and it After all was marked on it, "Best London Make." she said, they should put her shoulders to the wheel and do something for the revival of the national lanIt gave them back that national self-respect guage. She knew it was hard to say which they had lost. that they had lost national self respect or love for Ireland, but it was verv easy to say "God Save She had heard, she said, pecple reel out Ireland." of publichouses and repeat these words. Dealing with the system of average education in the National Schools some years ago, Miss Hayden said the schoolrooms were decorated with English pictures-an English soldier coming home to his mother, or a fat rosy-faced English seaman coming from his ship. There were no Irish emblems there, nor scarcely anything about Ireland in the leaves of the school books. The speaker �ext cau�ed som� �musement by describing her expenence while exammmg schoolboys in different parts of the country which tended to show the absolute want of knowledge of the children as regards Irish In one instance she was asked was Dublin history. far from Ireland, and on another occasion when a child was asked by its father what was the Shannon he replied it was a town. Concluding a very eloquent address, Miss Haydenexpressed the hope that .a good deal of this spirit of despising their country and their It was not a spirit language was being got rid of. She thought the English of hostility �o England. was a splendid language, and that the English history was a splendid one but they in Ireland were not English th<';efore En�lish was !lathing to them and they should try_ and cultivate their own language and support it •
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the same as the English supported t!1eirs. _Referring to the big fight which took place, 1.n �u�:1m on St. azo, and ,\ h.1ch Miss Hayden night a year PatIIick's · National o · "" F-cas t _o f thcir describedasadesecrationofthc Apostle and an exhibition of brutality, she said the money received there would have supported the whole . She suggested Gaelic League for twelve months. Army did, Salvation the what do should that they and have a self-denial week, and devote the. money which would otherwise be spent on s_uch thmgs as drink, tobacco, sweets, ctc., in _suppor�mg t�e Gaelic \Vith regard _to t�e industrial revival, she League. said, the greatest sinners m t�1s re �ect were the women. Thev did not insist on gettmg Insh goods, and they If �ny person could do more than the 1:-1en could. was doubtful whether thmgs were ma?e m Ireland they could get a f_ull_ list from the Insh Industrial Development Assoc1at10n The Rev. Brother O'Brien seconded �h� resolution Mi_cheal Smiclic, in support of the Gaelic League. Seamus O hEochaidh and �essrs. Shiel and Fitz. simons"'also addressed the meetmg. A new Branch of the League was established.
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GALWAY BILINGUAL SOCIETY. On Saturdav, November 6th, Mr. M. 0 Maicin President of the Society will deliver a lecture entitled · The subject is a most "A Plea for Rnral Education. of divorce the as one primary. c:ct u�2tion important from the life conditions of the rural communities is the The lec�ure will be subject of growing cri�ic�sm. open to the public, and it is hoped there will be a large attendance.
co111�1Rle. THE GREATEST OF THE IRISH-SPEAKING COUNTIES.
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Dear Sir, The reference in the ·' Freeman '' a few <lays ago to the activity of the language enthusiasts in Tralee and their programme of winter work is very gratifying But to those interested in the Language movement. while the loftiness of ideal and the intensity of enthusiasm announced from the Kerry capital are deserving of praise, the reference by a member of the Committee to" the greatest of the Irish speaking counties" as quoted in the article, will cause regret to those who regard the language revival not as a provincial, but as a national movement. Extravagant statements of this kind cause much harm to tourists and others, who, led to believe that Kerry is the most Irish speaking county, fail to realise the extent of Irish as a spoken The census returns show language in the country. that Galway and Mayo are more intensely Irish-speaking than Kerry.:Percentage of Ii ish Number who speak Irish only. Speakers. 9,442 56.5 Galway 2,529 50.r Mayo 2,495 43.2 Kerry Again, the number of children who speak Irish only In the is much larger in Galway than in Kerry. Oughterard Rural District, 24.32 per cent. of the In the Dingle children under r o speak Irish ONLY. Rural District, the most Irish, I believe, in Kerry, the percentage is only 4.41. Faithfully yours., T E. l\:IAcALIKNEY, C.C. Lettermore Island, Co. Galway.
FOREIGN NAMES IN IRISH.
A Chara, Will you allow a devoted reader-and on the whole, a well-pleased reader-to question a trick of some of your writers? Why must we get a mixture of Gaelic and Roman characters when classic or foreign names October z jrd, we read come into your columns? "San Tomas Aquinas," a little later we have the most extraordinary gem that was ever brought up to delight the eyes of the collector: "B'fhada roimhe sin a bhi We can get rid of Aristotlius by Aristotlius ann." simply wondering who the mischief he may be: he doesn't belong to the real world, and we can't argue fruitfully about the costume appropriate to the nonBut San Tomas Aquinas, him we know, existent. and for him we may complain: it is surely not right to make him ludicrous, in kilts below and a top hat It is reasonably certain-I'm no scholar on his head. and can give no chapter and verse-that this great saint and doctor was named often in Irish, and that there is an appropriate Irish form, well-established, for the place-name which has become part of his own name. The Frerich speak of This form should be used. St. Thomas cl' Aquin, the Germans of Der Heilige Thomas von Aquino, and so every country trims the name to its own ru1ing fashion: is Insh so dead that it alone cannot take -in the foreign names and make them easy, and as it were native to the native ? But, apart from any change in the encl-form of the word, why Roman characters ? Germans, when they arc using their own characters, do not suddenly break into When Roman-least of all for one half of a name. an English, a French or a German paper speaks of a Greek or a Russian, dead or alive, it doesn't suddenly burst into Greek or Russian type : Why must Irish adopt the extraordinary and meaningless device and wear a speckly look that no other language gives itself?
THE NATIVE SPEAKER : Examined Home, TWO STALKING FALLACIES 'ANATOMIZED BY REV. JOHN M. O'REILLY, C.C. Cloth, Crown 81•0. 2/6 net. 2/9 Post free. The purpose of this little voluun- is told in the title. lt is si111ply a cry for the admission of coumou s.mlt v into tlu- trem mcnt of the Irish languag,·. It is � humble cont ri but ion tow;1nt"s the s.1Ying of the Jam�uagt> from its great n,itura_ It is a r"espectful protl',·t , g,til,st the ahsunl uses enemy, the Native Speaker made of the Native SpP,;kl'r 'won! ,,"n<1 ma;1 · above all t•ist>, ag-ainst the mischicnius sj,eaker is ipso '.facto a fit teacher of the languai:::--;; delusion that the Native except where he never teaches hut is ever killing it, on the ht>artstom·. !t 1\i kindly-meant hint to such as it may concern, that the dav of impunity for nwp • tudes in Irish gr,m1111ar and Irish editing may be already f,ir spent.
SEALY, BRYERS
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WALKER, l\tid. Abbey St., DUBLIN,